The following is a tabulation of some prior art that presently appears relevant:
U.S. Patents
Pat. No.Issue DatePatentee4,445,196Apr. 24, 1984Gonet4,970,680Nov. 13, 1990Walters5,987,451Nov. 16, 1999Oehm
U.S. Patent Application Publications
Publication NumberPublication DateApplicant20090240671 A1Sep. 24, 2009Torres20100083162 A1Apr. 1, 2010Hernandez20030006969 A1Jan. 9, 2003Barras20070282786 A1Dec. 6, 2007Block20060069456 A1Mar. 30, 2006Stringer
Nonpatent Commercial Product Reference                1. Franklin Electronics BIB-950 Speaking Parallel KJV/NLT Life Application Study Bible Electronic Reference Device (Amazon.com product number: B008EH7M84)        2. GoBible Original—King James Version (2011) (Amazon.com product number: B001BKV06G)        3. Holy Bible—Hendrickson My Ibible: King James Version, Voice Only Preloaded Digital Audio Player (Amazon.com ISBN-10: 1619706687)        4. Chinese Bible Portable Electronics Audio Player MP3 Mandarin Chinese Christian (Amazon.com product number: B00W8ULNOC)        
Audio bibles have become more and more popular recently, with more than 20 dramatized and non-dramatized versions available for English translations alone. There are several advantages for listening to audio bibles:                1. There are many bible texts that are very difficult to read and pronounce, including many foreign people names and place names. A reader can easily overcome this by listening to audio bibles, and he/she can understand the bible content much better when both reading and listening to the bible. In addition, dramatized bible can make bible stories much more visualized than plain text bible.        2. Audio bibles are particularly useful for those whose preferred learning style is listening instead of reading, who have eyesight problems or reading difficulties.        3. While many Christians today are suffering busy daily schedules and do not have enough time to read bible, they can easily find time to listen to audio bible when driving, cooking, and exercising, etc.        4. It is also found recently that audio bibles are good English language learning tools for children. While it is difficult for a child at the age of 6 to read a chapter of English bible, it is much easier for the child to listen to the same chapter. After listening to the same chapter several times and becoming familiar with the contents/words, the child can read and understand the corresponding text much easier. Since children love to listen to stories, they enjoy listening to dramatized audio bibles. Because bible has large vocabularies, children can learn the English language quickly while learning to the bible.        5. Audio bibles are also great tools to assist bible memorization. If one listens to a passage again and again, it becomes easier to memorize it.        
While CD players, mp3 players, smart phones/tablets can be used to play audio bibles, there are several disadvantages:                1. If you only have one CD player, e.g. in your living room, you can only listen to audio bibles at where it is located. You also need to change disks frequently in order to listen to different books. If you have two CD players, e.g. one in your living room and another one in your car, you have to carry CDs around in order to play at both places, which is very inconvenient.        2. While mp3 players, smart phones/tablets are more convenient to play than CD players, their indexing system is not that convenient. They usually index by artist names, or album names, making it difficult to find a chapter of the bible because the whole Christian bible has 66 books and 1189 chapters. Even if you put all the chapters of one book into one album, you still need to go through a 66 book album menu first and then search for chapters. For a Psalm album, there are as many as 150 chapters to choose from. It can also make your mp3 player very crowded and difficult to find other contents.        3. In order to play on mp3 players, smart phones/phones, you may also need to go through the hassle to set up each audio bible file properties correctly in order that they may go into the right albums. It is not easy to do this right with 1189 audio bible files. That's why there are still some people who prefer to use CD players.        4. It is common for Christians who follow one-year bible reading plans to read different chapters from different books each day, e.g. two Old Testament history book chapters, one Psalm or Proverb chapter, and one New Testament chapter (See FIG. 1 for a bible reading plan example). The mp3 player, smart phone/tablet indexing system makes it difficult to jump to different chapters of different books back and forth.        5. Another major disadvantage of smart phones/tablets is temptation and distraction. While smart phones/tablets are becoming more and more powerful today, it is also very easy to waste time on emails, social media, and games, etc. That's why the average US smart phone users are spending 2-3 hours a day on their phones. As a result, it is very difficult to have a quality/focused time to study/listen to the bible on smart phones. If you give a child a smart phone to listen to audio bible, it is most likely that he/she will be tempted to play games, etc.        6. Smartphones and tablets are usually expensive and not affordable to some people. Even some good mp3 players like iPod are very expensive.        
Due to these disadvantages, it is necessary to have a dedicated audio player to play audio bibles.
In order to better study bible and get accurate meanings of particular verses, parallel text bibles are commonly used, in which two or more English bible translations are printed side by side for comparison study. If an audio bible player can play two or more English translations, it will be an even more valuable tool for bible study.
Since US is a country with immigrants from all over the world, there are many bilingual Christians/Churches, e.g. English/Spanish, English/Chinese, etc. Bilingual parallel text bibles are also commonly used. When the same bible text in two different languages is compared side by side, it is much easier to understand the actual meaning. It is also used as an effective tool to learn another language. If you understand the bible text well in one language, it is much easier for you to understand the same text in another language. As of 2005, there are audio bible recordings in almost 1000 languages. If there are bilingual or multi-lingual audio bible players available, they can be great tools to learn the bible, to learn different languages, and to share bible with people in other languages all over the world.
As almost all audio bible recordings are done on a chapter basis, most audio bible players are indexed to the chapter level only. But there are significant advantages if a player can index to the verse level.                1. Most of the bible quotations in preaching and books are at the verse level, e.g. John 3:16. If an audio bible player can go to a particular verse easily, it is even more convenient to use.        2. For parallel audio bible players, whether loaded with different English translations or different language translations, if one not only can find a particular verse quickly, but also can switch to the same verse of another translation quickly, one can easily compare the same verse in different translations. It will be a much more useful tool to study bible and another language.        3. In term of bible memorization, this is also very important. If one player can repeat a verse, instead of a chapter, again and again, the listener can easily divide the big task of memorizing a whole chapter into smaller tasks of memorizing verse by verse. This will become a powerful tool for children who participate in US national bible memorization competitions like Bible Bee or Bible Bowl.        
Because of the advantages of a dedicated audio bible player, there are several different audio bible players available in the market, e.g. GoBible Original (by GoBible LLC, Amazon.com product number: ASIN B001BKV06G. US patent application publication 20070282786 A1), My-ibible (by Hendrickson Publisher, Amazon.com product number: ISBN-10: 1619706687), Franklin Speaking Bible (by Franklin Electronics, Amazon.com product number: ASIN B008EH7M84), etc. While they eliminate the hassle of loading mp3 files correctly by the user, and temptations and distractions of smart phone/tablets, there is no actual improvement of their indexing systems. FIG. 2 is an example of the indexing system. One still needs to spend time go through the menu/sub-menu to find a particular chapter of the bible out of a total of 66 books and 1189 chapters. It is also very inconvenient to jump to different books/chapters back and forth in order to follow a one year bible reading plan. US patent application publication (20060069456 A1) also used the same indexing system with no improvement. A Chinese audio bible player (Amazon.com product number: B00W8ULNOC) uses a 4-digit numerical indexing system, in which the first chapter of the bible, Genesis 1, is given the number of 0001, and the last chapter of the bible, Revelation 22 is given the number of 1189. All other 1187 chapters use numbers in between based on their natural order in the whole bible. Even though a user can get around the traditional indexing menu to access any chapter of the bible quickly by entering a 4-digit number, it is almost impossible to remember all the 4-digit index numbers, and one has to refer to a printed menu for a chapter index number all the time, which is very inconvenient.
Besides audio bible players, there are also electronic bibles available for displaying bible text only. In theory, they could use the same indexing system as an audio bible player, except that they will display bible texts. While there were several attempts in US patents and US patent application publications to improve the indexing system of electronic bible, none of them are that successful. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,987,451 (1999), and U.S. patent application publication 20090240671 A1, 20100083162 A1, 20030006969 A1, 66 buttons are used for 66 bible books, which is too complicated to implement and use. U.S. Pat. No. 4,970,680 (1999) proposed a computerized bible with full keyboard, which is also complicated with no actual indexing improvement. U.S. Pat. No. 4,445,196 (1984) proposed a numerical system in which each of the 66 books would be assigned a book number based on the book name alphabetical order. Because it is difficult to remember, it has not been implemented on any real products. As a result, most of the audio bible players and electronic bibles today are still use the traditional indexing system as illustrated in FIG. 2, which is inconvenient to use.
Despite the advantages of parallel audio bible players for different English translations or different language translations listed above, only the Hendrickson speaking bible can play two different English translations. But due to its inconvenient indexing system and its high cost/price, it has not been successful and is no long manufactured.
Despite the advantages promised by indexing to verse level, only the Gobible Original can index to verse level. However, it didn't make any fundamental improvement to the indexing system other than adding one more sub menu for verses as illustrated in FIG. 3. As a result, it is still difficult to use. Also, it didn't claim other benefits of being able to index to verse level as it couldn't play more than one translation on the same player.